This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
In conventional vehicle heat exchange systems, hot fluid is cooled using a single heat exchanger which may be air cooled or liquid cooled. Liquid cooled heat exchangers have the benefit of being more flexible to package as they do not need to be positioned in the cooling air stream at the front of the vehicle. In engines cooled using water/glycol, once the water/glycol has been cooled by the radiator, it may be used in a liquid-liquid heat exchanger to cool the oil in the transmission system. However, the temperature of the water/glycol discharged from a conventional radiator approaches that of the transmission oil, and this thus leads to low cooling efficiency. In some applications, the amount of cooling required for the transmission circuit may cause the radiator to overheat. A low temperature circuit may be used to cool the water/glycol to a lower temperature, but this requires either an additional radiator or a complex radiator cooling both the low temperature and main cooling circuits, and thus this is an expensive and complex solution.
US 2006/0254538 shows a cooling circuit of an internal combustion engine of a motor vehicle, comprising a main cooling circuit with a main radiator, and a low-temperature circuit encompassing a low-temperature radiator. This is more complex than the known system as an additional radiator is required.
The present disclosure seeks to overcome, or at least mitigate, the problems of the prior art.